Artificial Condition

Murderbot boots itself back up four hours later. ART calls Murderbot childish for shutting itself down. Eventually giving in, Murderbot tells ART about its mission to the RaviHyral mining facility. Murderbot’s memory of the incident when it killed its clients was “partially purged” (36), so it isn’t sure what happened. Importantly, Murderbot wants to know if hacking its own governor module caused the incident, or if a malfunction caused the incident and Murderbot hacked its governor module afterward. It thinks that revisiting the place where the incident happened might spark its memory. ART suggests that Murderbot first must find out whether the incident happened at all.

ART thinks Murderbot will be spotted as a robot when they dock at the mining facility, since the humans there are familiar with and regularly employ SecUnits. ART offers to perform surgery on Murderbot using the ship’s medical suite to change its appearance, but Murderbot struggles to trust ART. It also worries that looking more like a human will encourage humans to socialize with it to a greater degree. After testing other methods to blend in with humans, Murderbot consents to let ART perform the operation, shortening Murderbot’s arms and legs and changing its code to allow it to grow body hair.